Last week, a court in Paderborn in the German state of Westphalia ruled that two Baptist couples lose their parental authority over their own children in educational matters. The court said it was interfering “in order to protect the children from further harm.” It stated that the parents had shown “a stubborn contempt both for the state’s educational duty as well as the right of their children to develop their personalities by attending school.” The court appointed the local Paderborn social service as guardian over the children to ensure that they attend public school.
The two couples belong to a group of seven families with a total of fifteen children of elementary school age who do not attend school. The parents were brought to court by the local education board of the county whose director, Heinz Kohler, argued that homeschooling cannot be allowed because it is “a right of the child not to be kept away from the outside world. The parents’ right to personally educate their children would prevent the children from growing up to be responsible individuals within society.” Kohler was backed by the Westphalian minister of Education, the Socialist politician Ute Schäfer, who stated that the obligation to attend a government approved school follows from the “right of a child to free education and maturation.”
And the First Amendment free exercise clause looks better and better all the time. At least in the U.S. you can't put parents in jail for not wanting their kids to see a play about a fairy tale.
Last January, a court in the Westphalian county of Gütersloh sentenced a couple to imprisonent, six days for the mother followed by six days for the father, because the parents had refused to let their children attend a Christmas school play after Grimm’s fairytale “König Drosselbart” (King Thrushbeard), which they considered blasphemous. The prison sentences were demanded by Sven-Georg Adenauer, the Christian-Democrat Landrat (governor) of Gütersloh county, because the parents refused to pay the fine of 150 euros which they had received for not sending their children to the school play.
Remember, this is a country that found a man suspected of aiding the 9/11 hijackers not guilty. It is also a country that has trouble trying suspected terrorists because of their own lax laws.
After three years of failing to hold anyone accountable for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Germany is preparing to expel accused members of the Hamburg-based cell that led the hijackings and send them to countries with more aggressive records of prosecuting terrorism.
Although two criminal trials are still pending, German officials, legal experts and lawyers involved in the cases said the massive investigation into the al Qaeda cell has been stymied by this country's lax anti-terrorism laws, unfavorable judicial rulings and a lack of evidence, making it increasingly doubtful that anyone here will be convicted.
The state of affairs is apparent at the judicial complex in Hamburg, where one of the defendants, Mounir Motassadeq, is being tried on more than 3,000 counts of accessory to murder and membership in a terrorist organization. Despite the gravity of the charges, he is a free man, walking alone from his home to the century-old courthouse each morning, unguarded.
But at least the streets are free of those dangerous homeschooling parents.
Priorities, people, priorities! Stop jailing Baptists and work on the terrorists. posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:40 PM
